Emotional intelligence

For most people, their IQ is more important than their emotional intelligence (EI). Unfortunately, the term emotional intelligence is a foreign concept. Basically, emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand one’s feelings as well as the emotions of those around them. Interestingly, there are people who do not comprehend how important it is to strenghten their EI. Here is the thing, our success in life does depend on our abiltity to deal with our feelings and also to read other people’s signals and react APPROPRIATELY. Yes, that is a key word to remember because so many of us, at times, we let our emotions take total control of our reactions, without rationally analysing the situation. And though some of us wish we can stuff our work colleagues in a bag and dump them in the trash, we cannot. Instead, we have to deal with their emotional signals and also ours because we are all social creatures. Relationships must be formed and to efficiently develop and maintain relationships we ought to strengthen our emotional intelligence.

1. Reduce negative emotions

A very important aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to effectively manage your negative emotions so that it does not overwhelm you or impair your judgement. In other to change how we feel about a situation, we must change the way we think about it. That is not always easy to do. For instance, if you feel that your friend is constantly ignoring you, a good suggestion is to come up with multiple reasons why your friend is not being communicative instead of being so bitter or angry immediately. So widening your perspective is always a good way to strenghten your EI.

Also, a serious issue is the fear of rejection.Rejection does not only pertain to someone turning down your offer to go on a date but also rejection could regards not getting a job or a promotion or even that food your sibling brought home and they refuse to share. Yea, it hurts but it is essential to provide yourself with solid alternatives. Having more than one plan certainly helps.

2. The ability to stay calm and manage stress.3

Geez, this is definitely one of my challenges regarding EI. We all experience stressful situations at some point. And to be honest, how Carlos manages his stress may not be how Ana does. Each person react differently to situations. For instance, if my cat died,crying my ass off is my coping mechanism (My cat did die last year and I did cry). But for others, they rather sit silently and reminisce. So, yea you do have to understand how you feel about an incident and try different HEALTHY mechanisms to cope. Also, managing stress is a process. It does not happen over night.

Staying calm in tense situations is indeed difficult. You may feel like slapping your sibling for stealing for food in the fridge or your teacher for losing your assignment but violence is not the answer my friend. You can always google ways to remain calm (know different ways before adversity strikes). One good way is to walk away from the situation for awhile or go for a walk or sit somewhere quiet where you can think things through. Sometimes removing yourself physically from a situation or not reacting instantantly helps tremendously.

3. Empathy

The ability to recognise how others feel is vital and empathy is a key component of emotional intelligence. Many times,we think only of ourselves and how something affects us but we do not realise how things affect those around us. The more able you are to understand the signals of others, the better you can control how you react. A huge part of being empathetic is putting yourself in the person’s shoes. Sometimes all that person desires is a friend to lean on , a good listener and someone that does not judge harshly. Compassion and empathy are qualities that humans lack these days.

There are many important elements that are not mentioned in this blog about EI. These mentioned are part of an attempt to provide some insight into this topic. Hopefully, this blog provoked some interest and introspection into the way we think and feel. Remember, our feelings are not be ignored. We should reflect and analyse how we feel and how others do before we react. We may not always agree with others or understand completely their behaviour but we must bear in mind that our reactions can affect a person negatively or positively.